1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a system and method for collecting on-road vehicle data and, more particularly, to a system and method for collecting data from on-road vehicles, providing data aggregation and knowledge extraction from the collected data and providing enhanced fault isolation and predicted maintenance services from the extracted knowledge.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Modern vehicles typically include several systems that are designed to increase vehicle safety, increase driver comfort, increase driver convenience, etc. As more and more such systems are added to vehicles, vehicle electronics, devices and electrical systems are becoming much more complex. Many electrical, control and software related faults associated with vehicle systems are intermittent or may only occur under certain conditions. Thus, a problem that a vehicle customer may experience on the road may not be able to be duplicated when the vehicle is taken to a service provider. This results in vehicle system, sub-system and component diagnosis and prognosis being much more difficult. Because a service technician may not be able to duplicate a problem, it is generally not possible to trouble shoot the problem for these situations. Further, because of the number of components and devices employed in these vehicle systems, it is generally a challenge to define all of the fault conditions for these components and devices that may exist. As a result, there is a significant number of service reports stating no trouble found (NTF) or customer concern not duplicated.